| Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.  |
| Gill maintains a progress report on the VJA bees |
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
They've been on the allotment about a fortnight. Yesterday, as I was earthing up potatoes, she arrived, donned her beekeeper's clothes, and made an inspection. Avoiding fast movements, she lit a bee smoker, removed the lid of the hive and and drew out frames as I watched from the other side of the net enclosure I'd built in March."Wow!"
She held a factory floor held vertical, teeming with bees.
"They are making a Queen, which is what I was hoping"
She pointed to a larger beeswax sealed cell in the centre of one of the frames
"In fact they are growing two. So I shall have to remove one"
"They don't seem concerned about you lifting them up en mass and turning them over on the frame, Gill"
"They are a very mild breed of bee"
Yes, Apis Mellifera
| Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.  |
| Bees on a frame from the hive on Plot 14 |
"I'll check again in a week, but so far so good"
We are especially solicitous as the first hive Gill put on the VJA, back in 2010, had to be removed after complaints from a plot holder's wife who feared he risked anaphylaxis if stung. I pressed for their return and, after assurances about insurance liability and attention to health and safety, a hive was allowed back on my plot on condition I constructed six foot high netting around the hive to protect the public. Gill delivered bees in July 2012. They didn't survive the winter. More were brought in 2013. These were still fine in early February 2014 but then too many of the them went foraging during an interval of sunny weather. When wet weather returned, returning workers brought fatal damp into the hive with them.
"Wet weather is bad for bees" Gill told me as, in March, she inspected the empty hive containing a few small corpses and a damp patch, like a tumour on an X-ray slide, on one of the frames.
| Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.  |
| Growing a queen - her cell |
So now we watch and hope. I'm delighted the bees are back and that Gill has persisted. "If they continue as they are the hive could hold 60,000 bees"
*** *** ***
"...the coming days are very decisive in keeping the unity, integrity and safety of Iraq" The 'traditional' borders - actually boundaries of nations called Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq set up in 1916 under the Sykes-Picot Agreement - are turning out more fragile and permeable than the one between Russia and Ukraine. Seen mayhem fictionalised in Game of Thrones? Watch the new 'game' of Caliphate - played with blood and fire while the UK glues to football in Brazil. ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) and its supporters are speaking triumphantly of ignoring post-Ottoman colonial borders (those straight lines drawn over the Middle East a century ago by the English and the French). They are 'nation-building', determined to restore a fundamentalist dominion across the Middle East. How may this Levantine struggle play out within the urban populations of Northern Europe? The silence from our government is palpable. One may imagine the wringing of hands in those corridors. I certainly have no answers. I watch and learn and feel safe in green England. My friend, D. - a very dear friend working in Baghdad, writes: "Dear Simon...it seems there is a wide scale attack on the country by terrorist groups, rebels and foreign fighters. The wrong policies of the PM Nouri Al-Maliki have aggravated the situation. The whole political process is at stake and the coming days are very decisive in keeping the unity, integrity and safety of Iraq. I hope this will finds you well, I miss you my friend. Best regards, D."
****** ******
An odd and depressing run-in with someone on the Villa Road. I'd posted something for Lin, and was coming out of a hardware shop, having bought a new bolt for the gate into the beehive enclosure. I passed, in the shop entrance, the man I recognised as having taken a plot next to mine a year ago, and then swiftly abandoned it. We'd had an amiable chat at the time he arrived, seemingly keen to grow things. But as is too typical of allotments, he soon abandoned the plot, leaving a pile of recovered building rubbish intended for a 'summer house' he'd planned to build. He left under a cloud, annoyed with the VJA committee who, he claimed, had let him down when he'd tried to chop back the hedge and tree overlooking his plot. They said he had no permission and should not have done it.
"Hullo" I said
"You can fuck off"
"I don't understand"
"I want nothing to do with you lot. Leave me alone. I'm with my boy"
"What's the problem?" I said and waited.
"I'm saying nothing to you. Piss off"
I remained standing on the pavement; then followed him back into the hardware shop.
"Right" said the rude man "I'm calling the police"
He dialled 999 on his smartphone.
"Yes. Police please... ... ...This man won't leave me alone. He's following me. Yes I'm on the Villa Road, with my boy"
I cycled off to continue shopping. On my way home I passed him going in the same direction, still talking on his phone. Seeing me he turned and headed back the way he'd come.
A Police Neighbourhood Team transit van drew up. I wheeled my bicycle up to it; Oscar in the basket.
"You can stay away. I'm talking to them, thank you." said the man
An officer descended and took me aside, keeping an ear open to his colleague's exchanges, as he took down my contact details and asked what had happened. I did my best to explain the last few minutes' bizarre experience.
"You seem a lot more compos mentis than the other gentlemen" he muttered and tucked his notebook away "I've got all I need, thank you"
*** *** ***
Vanley dropped over to my plot at my request.
"You can take up all your garlic" He set to pulling it all up
"Get me a bucket of water"
He sloshed all my pulled garlic clean and hung them in the trellis of the shed...
"They look good like that. Make you feel like a hunter-gatherer"
"You teasing me, Vanley?"
"They'll last a year. Plant the next lot in winter"
I peeled a bulb and ate it, enjoying the hot pepper crunch of it.
Your cabbage has all run away. Just pull it all up. If you have a rabbit they'll like the leaves. You should harvest your broccoli now, before it seeds."
I cut a dozen florets, and dug up a small crop of new potatoes, while earthing the rest.
